MEDIOCRAZIA

Italian band IL RUMORE BIANCO is a young, recent and enthusiastic unit of musicians with a strong affection for progressive rock in general and the vintage oriented varieties of it in particular. They were formed in 2012, and released their first EP "Mediocrazia" in 2013 as a self released production through the Bandcamp website.

That this is a band that know their classic rock as well as progressive rock is easy to hear on opening piece Tutto on Sugno (Pt. I), a composition that opens in a Deep Purple sounding manner and then expands upon this initial foundation with psychedelic and jazz-oriented details in the nice and suitably theatrical manner many would expect from an Italian band that appears to navigate in vintage oriented landscapes. The more atmospheric laden Il Vestitio Buono expands their sound with an ominous sounding, cinematic tinge that for someone at my age gives rise to associations to a TV-series like Twin Peaks, with hard prog tendencies, psychedelic details very much present and some funky, jazzrock vibes thrown in for good measure.

The darker, more distinctly jazzrock oriented Il Primo Attore is the highlight for me however, here the band takes a step up in terms of creating an interesting, compelling and often haunting mood at least as I experience them, taking on both harder edged, dramatic instances and more delicate and fragile variations of a core jazzrock oriented expression successfully here. The EP then concludes with Totto Un Sogno (Pt. II), an almost epic length affair where the band explores their classic hard rock and progressive rock tendencies alongside their psychedelic tendencies quite nicely and then elevates the total experience by incorporating passages closer to the darker toned, haunting jazzrock tendencies more thoroughly explored in the preceding creation.

In sum an EP that range between the pleasant and the compelling, documenting a band that are highly familiar with vintage era classic rock and progressive rock, and at least as far as I'm concerned at their most successful when exploring darker sounding material with an emphasis on jazzrock using piano, organ and saxophone as the dominant instruments.